An Unexpected Harmony on the Humanities, But…

Professor of English Mark Bauerlein of Emory University reports on a harmonious conference on the humanities. Harmony is all very well, but perhaps the conference might have done better to raise embarrassing questions that might have made it more contentious – such as that English Departments have shifted away from offering traditional literature and instead attempt to attract students with science fiction courses and other trendy subjects.

As I reported in my book, The Lowering of Higher Education in America, The American Council of Trustees and Alumni issued a report in 2007 entitled The Vanishing Shakespeare

that took aim at this trend. The report reported a survey of the requirements for English majors at 70 of America’s leading colleges and universities. ” . . . we defined a college or university as having a Shakespeare requirement when English majors were obliged either to take a course in

Shakespeare or to take two out of three single-author courses in Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton.”By this criterion, English majors at only fifteen of seventy major institutions of higher education did have to take a course in Shakespeare, including Harvard University, Catholic University, California Institute of Technology, Middlebury College, Stanford University, and Wellesley College. However, 55 of the 70 did not require its English majors to take a course in Shakespeare, including Princeton, Yale, Brown, Swarthmore College, Williams College, Columbia, Colby College, Carleton College, Bowdoin College, Bryn Mawr College, and Johns Hopkins.

True, English Departments often require students to take courses in expository writing, usually taught by graduate students. But perhaps because many undergraduates do not read traditional literature – many hardly read at all, as Professor Bauerlein has complained in another place – they do not write well and find it difficult to get jobs after graduation. Is it any wonder that parents suspect that a degree in English is not cost-effective?

Jackson Toby is professor of sociology emeritus at Rutgers University, where he was director of the Institute for Criminological Research. He is an Adjunct Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

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Notable

Western Civilization = White Supremacy

New York City school administrators have been taught that pillars of Western Civilization such as objectivity, individualism, and even belief in the written word all are examples of … white supremacy, theNew York Post reports.

A slide presentation obtained by the Post from the workshop “Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change” includes claims that a belief in an “ultimate truth” (objectivity) leads to a dismissal of “alternate viewpoints or emotions” as “bad” (this is straight out of the critical race theory playbook), and that emphasis on the written word overlooks the “ability to relate to others” and leads to “teaching that there is only ‘one right way’ to do something.”

Other “hallmarks” of white supremacy include a “sense of urgency,” “quantity over quality,” and “perfectionism.” Read more at The College Fix

The Civility Problem

Maybe a few courses on how to create a civil society would help America's so-called "social warriors" learn how to deal with their fellow men and women. Let's start with Amherst College in Massachusetts, where former Attorney General Jeff Sessions was scheduled to address the ongoing issue of free speech on campus. Campus Reform reports that Sessions got a dose of today's SJW tactics when a stinkbomb was set off before he went on stage. Then, a walkout was staged by a gay pride group punctuating the assault on the former A.G. Stinkbombs? What is this, 7th grade?

Studying 'Angry White Males'

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Erasing White Men from Politics

Believing that courses on American political thought are too fixated on white males, Professor Chad Shomura of the University of Colorado at Denver has solved the problem by banning discussion of white men in his course on the nation’s political thought. This means nothing from Washington, Jefferson, Tocqueville, Rousseau or any of the pre-Obama presidents. Discussion of the Hillary Clinton race for the presidency in 2016 is allowed, but how she managed to lose while apparently “running unopposed” is unclear.

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Be Careful What You Wish For on Social Programs

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Reader Letter of the Week

There are two real dangers to this anti-white mindset that its proponents don’t seem to comprehend.

First, a minority of foolish and morally bankrupt white people can, will, and do buy all the social justice arguments and place themselves on the other side. That’s how you get white nationalist groups who say, “Yes, it is a power struggle between whites and everyone else, and we intend to come out on top.”

Second, and far more serious, the vast majority of white people who still hold to the tenets of individualism and equality will see the social justice warriors as a real and direct threat to their safety, culture, and future and react accordingly. As when we fought the Nazis and the Communists, there’s no need to agree with an enemy or even hold him in any regard as serious to recognize him and defeat him.

Either way, the result is division, civil unrest, and even war. Unfortunately, in this case, the SJWs have created a landscape in which there is no middle ground. It is one side or the other. The Feminists will fall first because there is no way to have a serious conflict between the sexes, and women are immensely practical creatures. But the other groups will find themselves in a very nasty position of facing a frightened and angry majority that has no intention of offering itself up for sacrifice. And when they mobilize, the “battle” won’t be metaphorical.

David S. Zondy

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